THE HORSE SOLDIERS (1959)

Posted on October 22, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: John Ford

SCREENWRITER: John Lee Mahin, Martin Rackin

FILM STARS: John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers, Judson Pratt, Hoot Gibson, Ken Curtis, Althea Gibson, Willis Bouchey, Bing Russell, O.Z. Whitehead, Hank Worden, Chuck Hayward, Denver Pyle, Strother Martin, Basil Ruysdael, Russell Simpson

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Harold Sinclair

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Pan

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1959

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1956

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Western

WORDS: The Horse Soldiers is not considered one of John Ford’s best films, and it’s not, but it is very good John Ford which makes it better than most other people’s best films.

Biased I am but I notice, and it’s telling, that Ford is often compared to himself when it comes to films rather than to other similar films by other directors.  However, when you look at this film in comparison to others similarly themed (civil war theme), others at the time (1950s) or just classic action oriented, The Horse Soldiers rides high (sic).

Having said all that Ford apparently didn’t like the film much (we’re told that John Ford loved this project but was never happy with the screenplay).

Who knows. Ford was always difficult to interview, and difficult when it came to his own work.

What we have is on the screen and there are many beauties in this film … the march of the boy soldiers, the ambivalence of participants in war, the charge of the defeated, and aural and visual exploration on the nature of patriotism and heroism.

The Confederate Southerners have been depicted every which way in film, often as racist psychos, buffoonish clowns or gallant heroes but usually one note. Here Ford fits in most of the types without causing offence to either side or either side of history. There is the old-world southerner (Basil Ruysdael), the moral honest old sheriff (Russell Simpson), the degenerate soldiers (Strother Martin & Denver Pyle), the gallant officer (Carleton Young) the loyal slave (Althea Gibson), the seemingly scatty but sly Southern Belle (Constance Towers). The Union soldiers are a ragtag bunch: there is the non-professional soldier leader played by Wayne, the cynical but humanist doctor (William Holden), the officer with his eye on a political career (played brilliantly by Willis Bouchey who seemed made for such roles), the Irish sergeant (Judson Pratt), the ordinary soldiers (Ken Curtis, Ron Hagerthy)

The characters, or types move through a story that is quite fascinating in being so even handed and perhaps even aa touch cynical for 1959.

Defeat, as is normal in Ford films, is dwelt on and the further the men go on their mission the more weirdness they witness (the boy march, the last charge) and the more their casualties mount, and as they mount the more they question the mission though never to the point of disobedience. Wayne’s character was a railroad builder, now he is sent to destroy a railroad, Holden a surgeon who knows his duty but is forever agonized in the patching up men who won’t make it back. The film casually and quite realistically depicts the medicine of the mid-19th century: no anesthesia and little understanding of germs or the need for cleanliness as Holden himself washes the blood off his operating tables. As the mission progresses the more the leads turns on each other until neither side emerges unsoiled by their descent into what Col. Marlowe calls “this insanity”… and with that phrase the film is striking as a precursor in some ways to Apocalypse Now (1979)  … though a less dark, family friendly version.

The mission is detailed with Ford’s humanism through framing, lingering shots and those little “grace notes” (scenes, looks, asides) he adds to a film which aren’t in the script. Ford (like many of his generation) was notorious for using a script only as a coat hanger from which he could insert all his philosophy and humour. He surrounds his story and world view with an understanding of history. His films are realist, not in look but in understanding of time and place.

Though concessions are made to the time when his films were made, his characters, largely, reflect the time and place of the story. He places them in a cultural milieu and, where appropriate, ennobles them within their circumstances, as much as he can. So, the Afro American characters here, circa 1864, aren’t Django Unchained (2012) type gunmen dispensing one liners and retribution (yes, I know Tarantino wasn’t looking for realism). Likewise his native Americans in his westerns may be the villain protagonists of the film but they are rarely less than noble and there is always a hint that they were the ones who were deprived and dispossessed and have the moral high ground. Accordingly, despite haircuts, his characters, black, white or otherwise, are rarely anachronistic. They may fit in with his world view, but they fit into their times. To modern audiences they seem less emancipated and as a result less exciting perhaps but to anyone who reads they are more satisfying.

And you see that in this film. There are all sorts of bits and pieces of little detail …. how different social classes in the military and public are depicted, the divergent attitudes of northerners and southerners, the role of slaves, the encroachment of technology (photography is given a nod).

Don’t get me wrong Ford isn’t making docudramas, he is a poetical realist. Visually, he directs the camera to photograph beautiful images, but ones framed and composed to make us empathize with the emotions of the characters caught up in historical events. Events that he has made more real by attention to the culture, customs, and habitat of the time.

Here those events happen to be wrapped around a real story.

The screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin was loosely based on Harold Sinclair’s 1956 novel of the same name, a fictionalized version of “Grierson’s Raid” in Mississippi where Union soldiers go behind enemy lines to destroy railroads supplying supplies to the front.

In April 1863, Colonel Benjamin Grierson led 1,700 Illinois and Iowa soldiers from LaGrange, Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, through several hundred miles of enemy territory, destroying Confederate railroad and supply lines between Newton’s Station and Vicksburg, Mississippi. The mission was part of the Union Army’s successful Vicksburg campaign to gain control over boat traffic on the Mississippi River, culminating in the Battle of Vicksburg. Grierson’s destruction of Confederate-controlled rail links and supplies played an important role in disrupting Confederate General John C. Pemberton’s strategies and troop deployments. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman reportedly described Grierson’s daring mission as “the most brilliant of the war”.

Though based loosely on Grierson’s Raid, The Horse Soldiers is a fictional account that departs considerably from the actual events. The real-life protagonist, a music teacher named Benjamin Grierson, becomes railroad engineer John Marlowe in the film. Hannah Hunter, Marlowe’s love interest, has no historical counterpart. Numerous other details were altered as well, “to streamline and popularize the story for the non-history buffs who would make up a large part of the audience.”

Dr. Erastus Dean Yule, the real-life surgeon counterpart of Major Hank Kendall, actually did volunteer to stay behind and get captured by the Confederates with the casualties who were too wounded to continue. The raid actually took place about a year before the notorious Andersonville POW camp was built, and he was eventually exchanged after several months as a POW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Soldiers

As it turned out Grierson’s Raid worked. Troops were pinned down as supplies stopped. Not only did Benjamin Grierson and his brigade destroyed Confederate rail tracks, trains, bridges, storehouses and warehouses, the brigade but they also freed slaves apparently. I do not recall any slaves being emancipated by Marlowe’s forces in the film, but the film does not ignore the topic, thanks to presence of Lukey’s the slave maid and the doctor’s snide comments about the South’s dependence on slavery. Constance Tower’s Hannah Hunter, initially comes off as a caricature of Scarlett O’Hara but her character develops throughout most of the film as she is exposed to more outside her safety bubble.

The book, which I read a long, long time ago reads like what it is, a fictional historical narrative, much like what Upton Sinclair was doing. And I must say I do prefer reading about fictional figures and all their personal dramas in historical settings with real historical characters dipping into the story rather than giving real historical figures personal lives based on guesswork.

I note that Ford perhaps lost interest in the film after one of his stuntmen died. Then as now the director is the captain of the ship. And ford having served, took that especially seriously so when …

During filming of the climactic battle scene, veteran stuntman Fred Kennedy suffered a broken neck while performing a horse fall and died. “Ford was completely devastated,” wrote biographer Joseph Malham. “[He] felt a deep responsibility for the lives of the men who served under him.” The film was scripted to end with the triumphant arrival of Marlowe’s forces in Baton Rouge, but Ford “simply lost interest” after Kennedy’s death. He ended the film with Marlowe’s farewell to Hannah Hunter before crossing and blowing up the bridge.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Soldiers

The cast is uniformly excellent.

John Wayne and William Holden (the producers originally wanted Clark Gable for the leading role … apparently) were at the top of the game. Wayne and Holden were very close personal friends and friendly rivals at the box office. That’s part of the reason that The Horse Soldiers is so good … the chemistry between them. In fact when Wayne died in 1979, Holden was said to have gone on one legendary drinking binge. Constance Towers (in a role that looks like it could have been for Maureen O’Hara) has the right amount of Southern arrogance and spunk. She went on to have a spotty but interesting career (she was also in Ford’s great Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and anyone in Shock Corridor (1963) Fate Is the Hunter (1964) or The Naked Kiss (1964) is worthy of attention). Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the colour line of international tennis. This is her only role in an era when it was common to drop sports stars into supporting roles every now and then. There is good support from Judson Pratt (also in Ford’s Sergeant Rutledge (1960)), Bing Russell (Kurt’s father) and Denver Pyle and Strother Martin great as a some white trash deserters, and of course, there is a list of Ford stock company O.Z. Whitehead , Hank Worden, Chuck Hayward, Carleton Young, William Henry, Anna Lee, Russell Simpson, Hoot Gibson, Jack Pennick, Stan Jones, Bill Borzage, Danny Borzage, Gertrude Astor. I note William Wellman Jr. – later in surf movies (and the son of director William Wellman) is a bugler.

The script is literate and thoughtful, melancholy and occasionally funny in that way Ford had of injecting humour into dramatic situations, and drama into humorous situations. This wasn’t always in the script (scripts he had an uncredited hand in) but just Ford’s temperament and perhaps more real life … real life isn’t one note.

Miss Hannah Hunter pretending to be a scatterbrained southern belle uses her feminine assets soften up the Union officers and extract information from them:

Hannah Hunter [bending over with a plate of chicken, revealing ample cleavage] asks

“Do you prefer the leg… or the breast?”

Col. John Marlowe replies 

“I’ve had quite enough of both, thank you’.

Martin Rackin (The Enforcer (1951), Hell on Frisco Bay (1956), Santiago (1956)) teamed up with John Lee Mahin. Both men wrote and produced The Horse Soldiers (1959) and North to Alaska (1960) for Wayne. Both are no slouches at action films with a little colour with Mahin especially notable for films going back to the early 1930s (He was a writer and producer, known for Scarface (1932), Captains Courageous (1937) Ford’s Mogambo (1953), and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)).

The love interest between Wayne and Towers is a little unbelievable given her allegiance to the South, not to mention the large age difference between the two but it is the 1950s and a love interest is required.

The music is wonderful … from rousing themes to sad little reflections with the cavalry chorus songs being favourite “sing in the shower” songs of mine for a while. Ford (who must have had a say) makes marvelous use of music, weaving traditional Civil War era songs with the song written by Stan Jones for the film, “I Left My Love”, a catchy and infectious ballad. Incidentally Stan Jones makes a brief appearance in the film as Ulysses S. Grant and does well by him. Both the soundtrack (David Buttolph His Orchestra And Chorus) and an album of (trad pop) songs by Constance Towers (with the leads sitting around a campfire admiring her on the sleeve) are worth getting.

Did the movie make money?

Holden and Wayne both received $750,000 for starring, a record salary at the time. The film opened at number one in the United States and made good money, but apparently, was ultimately a commercial failure, due (allegedly) largely to Wayne’s and Holden’s high salaries and the complex participation of multiple production companies. I’m not sure about that. I’ve read it did good box office elsewhere in the world. In any event it was a tough year with much competition from Ben-Hur, The Shaggy Dog, Some Like it Hot, Operation Petticoat, Pillow Talk, Imitation of Life, North by Northwest, The Nun’s Story, On the Beach, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Rio Bravo and others for the box office.

Watch it.

BOOK PAGES

 

when books were cheap second hand …30 cents … and you could return them and get 10 cents back.

Constance Towers album – United Artists (1959)

LINKS

TRAILER

ANOTHER VERSION

PUBLISHER: Dell

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1959

COUNTRY: USA

COVER: Paperback

 

MUSIC

Soundtrack Album

 

 

 

Posted in Historical, Novel, Western, WITH MUSIC | Tagged | 8 Comments

EARTHQUAKE (1974)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Mark Robson

SCREENWRITER: George Fox, Mario Puzo

FILM STARS: Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, Geneviève Bujold, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Victoria Principal, Walter Matthau, Monica Lewis, Gabriel Dell, Pedro Armendáriz, Jr., Lloyd Gough, John Randolph, Kip Niven, Scott Hylands, Tiger Williams, Donald Moffat, Jesse Vint, Alan Vint.

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: George Fox

TYPE: Novelisation

PUBLISHER: Signet

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1974

COUNTRY: USA

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1974

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Disaster

WORDS: Every era seems to come up with disaster films though some thrive on them.

The 70s were awash (sic) with disaster films:

In the air – the Airport films (Airport (1970), Airport 1975 (1974), Airport ’77 (1977), The Concorde … Airport ’79 (1979)), Concorde Affaire ’79 (1979), Skyjacked (1972), SST: Death Flight (1977 Made for TV)

At sea – Gray Lady Down (1978), The Neptune Factor (1973), The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

From outer space – Meteor (1979)

And on land:

From disease – The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

From man made vehicles – rollercoasters in Rollercoaster (1977), runaway trains in Runaway! (1973 Made for TV), The Cassandra Crossing (1976) (the film has a double disaster bonus – a lethal germ on board a runaway train), cars in Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976 Made for TV)

From bugs – The Swarm (1978), The Savage Bees (1976 Made for TV), The Bees (1978)

From fire – The Towering Inferno (1974), City on Fire (1979 film), Fire! (1977 Made for TV film)

From natural calamity – Avalanche (1978), Flood! (1976 Made for TV), Hurricane (1979), When Time Ran Out (1980 – a volcano), Condominium (1980 Made for TV – a storm)

I suspect the masses at the time were becoming more aware of the world we live in with pollution, environmental degradation, ecological destruction, urban sprawl, disease, famine, overpopulation all being televised with whatever natural or manmade calamities were going down that week.

And, earthquakes were in the news with severe ones with big losses of life in Peru (1970), Iran (1972), Nicaragua (1972), and China (1974) not to mention Californians knowing they were sitting on the San Andreas fault

Earthquake is a melodrama with a big epic disaster film dumped on it which is normal. Disaster films must ground themselves on the human otherwise they just become a series of scenes of buildings falling down, dams collapsing, fires burning, lava flowing, asteroids hurtling, tidal waves crashing, storms and tornadoes thumping, etc. All this is fine if the disaster films look for the “humanity” in the relationships between people trying to evade the disaster or escape from the after affects of the calamity or otherwise save people who have been affected. But some films also bring melodrama to the mix and look at the personal relationships between people who have been inconvenienced by the disaster. Inevitably that means setting up the relationships, or rather the tensions in the relationships, followed by a disaster, followed by a working through emotions as they struggle against the obstacles created by the disaster.

This melodrama and disaster mix goes back to the earliest of sound era disaster films, San Francisco (1936), The Hurricane (1937), In Old Chicago (1938), and The Rains Came (1939).

Of course you can’t set the characters up and be invested in them without backstory.

And, backstory combined with physical action means disaster films are usually long,

When it comes to ticking the boxes Earthquake (1974) has it all, melodrama, buildings falling down, dams collapsing, fires burning … and length (123 minutes cut down from 161 minutes which makes the melodrama a little choppy).

Earthquake has many strengths and many flaws. There are a half dozen stories going on, which all, more or less, converge after the earthquake. Central is college football star (Charlton Heston), in a dysfunctional marriage to Ava Gardner, his mistress (Genevieve Bujold), and his father in law (Lorne Greene) (note – Gardner was only eight years younger than Lorne Greene). The usual absurdities follow.

But, it’s fun (and cornball) because the actors play it straight (maybe too straight at times). The cast is, as was the case in the 70s disaster films, packed with stars, former stars and up and coming stars but no one is taxed acting wise. (Spoiler ahead) Heston was in his dying gloriously stage … it seemed as if he died in every second film in the 60s and 70s, and he is perfect in a role which he has played a variation on many times before and many times since. Director Mark Robson, not averse to “big” action films (Von Ryan’s Express (1965), Lost Command (1966), Avalanche Express (1979)) or small tight drama films (Champion (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), The Harder They Fall (1956)), keeps the film chugging along from one emotional drama or disaster set piece to the next. The special effects are as good, and sometimes better than you would expect (this was a big budget film) in pre CGI days (CGI being more of a curse than a blessing) though there are a lot of people pretending to hold on to things and falling in all sorts of directions during the quake.

The film was a big hit … it grossed $79.7 million domestically ($450.5 million, adjusted for inflation in 2023 dollars) being one of the highest-grossing films of the time.

Is it fun?  Yes, watch it but don’t think about it.

The book is a synopsis of the film with a series of “making of” articles. Nothing here that you would need outside of trivia titbits. Interestingly novelist Mario Puzo (The Godfather) wrote the early draft screenplay (in 1972) and then George Fox was brought in to finish it off / work on it.

Trivia:

  • Walter Matthau was cast in a cameo role, for which he was credited as “Walter Matuschanskayasky”. Matthau was born Walter John Matthow though his family name is Milton Matuschansky. As part of a lifelong love of practical jokes, Matthau created the rumours that his middle name was Foghorn and his last name was originally Matuschanskayasky.
  • The film was filmed (or rather screened in) in “Sensurround” – in select cinemas a series of large speakers would pump in sub-audible “infra bass” sound waves equivalent to a jet airplane at take-off, giving the viewer the sensation of an earthquake. Sensurround was used again for the films Midway (1976), Rollercoaster (1977), and Battlestar Galactica (1979)

BOOK PAGES

 

 

LINKS

TRAILER

Posted in Disaster, Novelization | Tagged | Leave a comment

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1974)

Posted on September 10, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Kevin Connor

SCREENWRITER: Michael Moorcock, James Cawthorn

FILM STARS: Doug McClure, John McEnery, Susan Penhaligon, Keith Barron, Anthony Ainley, Godfrey James, Declan Mulholland, Roy Holder, Andrew McCulloch, Ron Pember, Brian Hall, Peter Sproule, Steve James

COUNTRY: GB / USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Edgar Rice Burroughs

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Tandem

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1975

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1918

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Sci Fi

WORDS: While the term “science fiction” had not yet been coined in the days before the First World War there were authors beginning to write works that would clearly fit into that genre: Frenchman Jules Verne (1828-1905), Englishman H. G. Wells (1866-1946), and American Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). All three would set the boundaries of science fiction.

All three would write adventures with various degrees of fantasy and science fiction in them.

Though I have read mostly the last two, the charm in their storytelling comes from the application of the then known science to an adventure narrative.

So why can’t you have dinosaurs on an island in the 20th century who don’t know they are supposed to be extinct?

And, lets face it what a great title … The Land That Time Forgot.

The title is a synopsis of the book and it has a bum bum bum dramatical musical quality to it.

The “lost world” story was popular at the turn of the last century when science was banging on the door of tall tales and superstition for ordinary folk – with novels such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1874) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), H. Rider Haggard She: A History of Adventure (1887), A. Meritt’s The Face in the Abyss (1931), Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), The Moon Pool (1918), and H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1931).

It’s fun and plausible and it’s only a short hop from here to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990)

I’m more of a Tarzan man and I love author Burroughs. He is less scientific than H.G. Wells but he nevertheless wrote adventures (like Tarzan – a baby is raised by apes in Africa) and sci fi (like the John Carter novels – a Civil War veteran who gets transported to Mars or another planet called Barsoom) with a basis on the real, or the plausible.

He was quite happy to mix the known with the knowable with the plausible and potential.

They read well and are a lot of fun even though the “science” is no longer accurate or even “science’ anymore … and Burroughs likes the setting (or can make easy use of it) because he returned to the “lost world” idea with dinosaurs on Tarzan the Terrible (1921) and then again without dinosaurs in Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929).

Here the story starts out as a wartime sea adventure, before hitting the lost world where dinosaurs and people exist side by side. It’s fun.

And so is the film from 1974. I first saw it as a kid in the 70s (I have a recollection they showed it to us in school on a projector – but I could be wrong) but as a kid in the 70s it was cheer out loud fun. As an adult I watched it with my young kids and it is still fun though the rubber monsters, fake backdrops, puppets and other assorted pre CGI effects are noticeable (to me, kids don’t notice) but I don’t care because there was effort put in.

What I like best is by the time I had become an adult I had become a Doug McClure fan. Interestingly, another favourite of mine, Stuart Whitman, was to have starred: “Amicus originally wanted to cast Doug McClure in the lead, but he refused, so they signed Stuart Whitman. Then Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures came on board as co-financers, providing the bulk of the budget, but would only make the film if McClure was cast. He changed his mind and agreed to do the film”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_That_Time_Forgot_(1974_film)

McClure is great because in most of his roles he is committed but never seems to take anything too seriously. He is professional but with  a knowing wink to the audience as he does here which is the perfect position to take when your character is on an island with British and German sailors, primitive man and dinosaurs all competing with each other.

The film’s director Kevin Connor said: “Doug was a great asset. In fight scenes he was especially good due to his hours of American TV action films. He knew exactly where the camera was at all times and threw punches precisely where the effect would work for the screen. He was always co-operative and came up with many ideas”. No amount of stage work will give you that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_That_Time_Forgot_(1974_film)

The rest of the cast are British (a UK-US co-production) with pretty Susan Penhaligon standing out, though everyone looks 1974 groomed for a film set around 1918.

The screenplay was co-written by English sci-fi author Michael Moorcock (The Fireclown, aka The Winds of Limbo (1965), The Ice Schooner (1966), The Black Corridor (1969), The Final Programme (1969) A Cure for Cancer (1971)The Alchemist’s Question (1984)).

He was perhaps a good fit for the material giving it a little more science meat for the 70s but maintaining the fantasy elements. Moorcock who writes in heroic fantasy fiction a lot has mentioned that “The Mastermind of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the first non-juvenile books that he read before beginning primary school.

He said this about the film: “I was very lucky in being given the authority by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc to write a movie as close to the first part of the book as possible, but even then the producer managed to stick a volcano in, which I had insisted not be in the movie (making it difficult to continue the series according to the books!). Jim Cawthorn broke the book down into scenes and I wrote the script. We used the German submarine commander as the biologist on board who could explain the theme, rather than have a stereotypical U-boat German of the period (WW1) when the books were written. Even then his dialogue had to be overdubbed by Anton Dolin (I think) who had a rather more convincing voice than the actor who played the commander. Given the budget, I thought they did pretty well, using glove-puppet dinosaurs mostly. They got the atmosphere of the sub finding the secret way into the island very well, I thought. My main trouble with the dinosaurs was the fixed wing pterodactyl and there was also a certain amount of dimensional problems here and there. All things considered, however, I thought it came out pretty well. Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc for some reason didn’t exercise the same control over the sequel. After learning what the producers intended, Jim and I left the project, whereupon one of the producers took it over”. https://www.michaelmoorcock.net/forum/q-a/q-a-%E2%97%A6-questions-for-mike-news/1793-the-land-that-time-forgot

Co author James Cawthorn (1929–2008) who was also a fantasy illustrator and comics artist often collaborated with Moorcock.

The film was a big enough hit for the production company Amicus (distributed in the United States by American International Pictures) was to make two more Burroughs adaptations, The People That Time Forgot (1977), a direct sequel to this film starring Patrick Wayne, Sarah Douglas and McClure in a cameo, and At the Earth’s Core (1976), also with McClure (in a different role), Peter Cushing, and Caroline Munro.

Will I watch it again? yes, with a bottle of red at my side.

TRIVIA

  • The film (or book) was remade in 2009 under the same title though sometimes called Dinosaur Island and it is no fun. Still low budget but all CGI.

LINKS

TRAILER

Posted in Adventure, Book Type, Novel, Science Fiction | Tagged | Leave a comment

THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (1954)

Posted on August 27, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: William A. Wellman

SCREENWRITER: Ernest K. Gann

FILM STARS: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Robert Stack, Jan Sterling, Phil Harris, Ann Doran, Robert Newton, David Brian, Paul Kelly, Sidney Blackmer, Julie Bishop, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, John Howard, Wally Brown, William Campbell, John Qualen, Paul Fix, George Chandler, Douglas Fowley, Regis Toomey, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, William Hopper, William Schallert, Doe Avedon, Karen Sharpe, John Smith

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Ernest K. Gann

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Hodder

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1956

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1953

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Disaster

WORDS: This will be a long haul …

The film was, for many years, unseen. It was owned by Batjac, John Wayne’s own production company co-founded by him (and Robert Fellows) for him to both produce and star in movies. Most production companies formed by stars are done so they can star in (or produce) films they want to be made, do roles they don’t get offered much, make more money, or all of the above. Originally called Wayne/Fellows Productions Wayne renamed the corporation after a fictitious trading company mentioned in his film Wake of the Red Witch (1948) though in the movie it was spelled Batjak (Wayne’s secretary misspelled it as Batjac on the corporation papers, and Wayne let it stand). The first Batjac production was Big Jim McLain (1952) released by Warner Brothers. Many of John Wayne’s subsequent films were produced by Batjac who also produced films for stars other than Wayne.

Wayne’s company certainly produced westerns for him (especially later) but also put him into action, adventure and cop movies as well as a pair of films with him as a pilot, the modest hit and Island in the Sky (1953) and this film which was a big smash at the box office (the sixth most popular film of the year in North America).

Most of the Batjac films in the 50s were released by Warner Brothers, meaning there was money in them, and you could see it on the screen (I wish I saw it on the big screen). This is A budget filming 1950s style.

All the films, Wayne’s and one starring other actors, are all superior entertainments. They are well made action and adventure films which are quite literate within the confines of their genres.

Why all this talk?

Well for many years The High and the Mighty was a “lost film”

I recall only twenty or so years ago VHS copies (taped from TV in the 70s I assume) exchanging hands for $70 or $80 US … and apparently the quality wasn’t all that good. I might be a John Wayne fan (and I am) but I wasn’t going to pay that (all the more reason to read the source novel, which I did)

The film was ‘lost” because of a production/distribution deal with Warner Bros giving Batjac the rights to three Wayne films — The High and the Mighty (1954), Hondo (1953), Island in the Sky (1953). McLintock! (1963), distributed by United Artists and produced by Batjac was another “lost” film. Batjac also held full copyright ownership in several non-Wayne movies which were considered lost – Seven Men from Now, Man in the Vault (1956), Ring of Fear (1954), Plunder of the Sun (1953), Track of the Cat (1954), China Doll (1958), Escort West (1958), and Gun the Man Down (1956).

Batjac, not being a major studio, didn’t have the means to actively re-release the films quickly which means the films weren’t on TV much and weren’t released during the initial video craze or the initial DVD craze when all the big companies were racing to get old product out.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t want to, they just had less resources and had to do deals to get the films out, which meant delays.

“After Wayne’s death in 1979, his son Michael Wayne gained full ownership and managed the company until he died in 2003. He meticulously managed the release pattern of his father’s films and restored Hondo and McLintock! in the early 1990s for release on VHS and television. His passion was to restore the other two films, but water damage to the original elements made it impossible during his lifetime. Taking advantage of the new digital restoration processes, Michael’s widow Gretchen restored these films in 2004 and released them through a distribution deal with Paramount Pictures in 2005” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batjac_Productions

Once they were remastered and released on DVD I was excited but had some trepidation. After waiting for something for a long time will it meet my expectations, will my excitement look over the films flaws or will I be let down?

I recall on first seeing the High and the Mighty and I was not let down though it is not without some minor flaws.

Because it had been out of action many critics (like Leonard Maltin in his seminal annual books “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide”) recall it from their youth and praise it, not having seen it as an adult they probably forgot its flaws. Leonard probably did not second guess himself as he would do a documentary on the film that came with its initial DVD release.

I say all this, but in reality the flaws are minor.

This is superior soap with action sequences.

The film about a plane load of passengers in danger is a trope but this film invented the trope. This is the first of the “Airport” type films, the grandfather of the “can the plane make it back to earth safely” story. Here, as per the requirements of the subgenre all the characters on the plane flying between Honolulu and San Francisco have their back stories, and they react differently to the catastrophic engine failure event. It’s up to the pilots, including co-pilot Wayne who has his own demons (as a result of an earlier air crash he was a pilot on that also killed his wife and child) to overcome the obstacles. The beauty here is that being a DC-4 with 17 passengers and a crew of 5 just about all the characters’ back stories can be explored. By the time we got to the Airport films with their 707s and 727s and crew and passengers in the hundreds this was no longer possible so they would pick out a cross section to drive, as they do here, the human element of the narrative.

This is a mixed blessing. The film’s only noticeable flaw (if it is a flaw) are the many flashbacks which are surprising (given the director is William Wellman who likes zip and action), and which slow down the action and increase the running time. Having said that they increase the “human element” and soap qualities (there is also some speechifying and religious symbolism) of the film making it, as it was called by some critics at the time, the “Grand Hotel in the sky”, referring to the famous 1932 film soap opera Grand Hotel whose many characters, with many stories intersect at a hotel in Berlin. Some of the flashbacks in The High and the Mighty are a little hokey but necessary (it’s interesting to think what would have happened if superior soap director Douglas Sirk directed this film).

But there is a fair bit of action. Perhaps a better name for it would have been “Stagecoach in the air” … referring to the John Wayne John Ford film from 1939 – a small group of characters, with different stories in a confined mobile space facing an external threat.

It’s a thoroughly entertaining film and Wayne is wholly convincing (though he never liked his performance, and only did it when they couldn’t get Spencer Tracy for the role) as the tortured though professional pilot. There are so many good bits with Wayne – as he snaps at pilot Robert Stack or comforts the passengers. His mannerisms and asides are gold but all the cast are great, especially Wayne’s co-star from Stagecoach and Allegheny Uprising (both 1939) Claire Trevor (in a role turned down by Barbara Stanwyck who thought the role was too small). Trevor was nominated for the best supporting actress oscar (as was co-star Jan Sterling who is excellent) … neither won. Also, anything with William Campbell has to be good (his role is bigger than his cast position would suggest) and it’s good to see Laraine Day, Robert Stack (who parodies this sub genre later in Flying High (1980)), scenery chewing Robert Newton, future TV star (Laramie) and John Wayne co-star (Circus World (1964)) John Smith in a small support, the babaceous Karen Sharpe and Doe Avedon, and John Wayne friends Pedro Gonzales Gonzales, John Qualen, and Paul Fix in roles.

Director William Wellman (himself an ex-pilot) made quite a few aviation films and had already made Island in the Sky (1953) with John Wayne (who played an army pilot on a transport plane) which was also based on a novel by Gann. That film was a modest but effective, black and white film about men fighting the elements after crash landing. Here he shows what he can do with a lot of dialogue. The film is long and for the most part limited to a plane but it’s a hoot. The characters riff off each other but there is no doubting the central story is Wayne’s.

Legendary composer Dimitri Tiomkin scored the film and composed the theme song “The High and the Mighty”. The song was also called “The Whistling Song” because John Wayne whistled the tune during the film. Tiomkin’s music topped hit parade charts and remained there for weeks, increasing the film’s profile. He also won an Academy Award for his original score, while the title song for the film also was nominated for an Oscar.

The song has become an exotica standard. The first release of the title tune was by Leroy Holmes and His Orchestra (Whistling by Fred Lowery) in 1954 released even before the version by Dimitri Tiomkin and His Orchestra. Many versions (80+) have been done since by all the usual orchestra leaders, Marty Gold, Franck Pourcel, Les Baxter, as well as combos headed by Arthur Lyman, Jimmy Smith and instrumentalists like Roger Williams, Ferrante & Teicher and the Shadows. There was even a vocal version released with lyrics by Ned Washington. The tune was just that catchy. For me, one of the best versions is Los Indios Tabajaras from 1966.

The film was a big hit at the time and solidified Wayne’s run at the top as a #1 box office star (and it has to be remembered that Wayne was in the Top 10 from 1949 – 1974 and in the 50s, when he was at his peak, he made relatively few westerns ( 5 out of 19)).

A long time prior to seeing the film I had read the book. I found the book in an op shop and though it doesn’t mention the film specifically (as you can tell from the cover) it’s pretty clear John Wayne and Robert Stack are depicted. I bought it and read it immediately. I loved it and it kicked off my reading anything by Ernest K. Gann. Gann was an interesting character … a pilot (commercial, army transport, and private), and a sailor, and he wrote about both. He had a Hemingwayesque style with action and philosophising. His characters are more than one dimensional and there are whole passages of prose that read like poetry (with a touch of melancholy and memory in a Rod McKuen-esque way – and that’ a good thing) which is all anchored by a generous amount of technical detail for fiction (which doesn’t get in the way of the story (or screenplay which he also wrote)), so much so that after having read his books, you feel like you could fly a plane or captain a boat. Its been awhile since I read the novel but I recall the suspense and action not being overshadowed by the whys and hows of flying a plane in potentially disastrous circumstances.

It is a thoroughly entertaining read.

See the film, read the book.

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MUSIC

Les Baxter title theme song (cover) – 1954

Los Indios Tabajaras title theme song (cover) – 1965

Posted in Disaster, Drama, Novel, WITH MUSIC | Tagged | Leave a comment

THE DROWNING POOL (1975)

Posted on August 20, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Stuart Rosenberg

SCREENWRITER: Tracy Keenan Wynn, Lorenzo Semple Jr., Walter Hill

FILM STARS: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Richard Derr, Anthony Franciosa, Murray Hamilton, Gail Strickland, Melanie Griffith, Richard Jaeckel, Paul Koslo, Joe Canutt, Andrew Robinson, Coral Browne, Helena Kallianiotes

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Ross Macdonald

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Fontana

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1975

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1950

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Crime

WORDS: I love the Ross Macdonald “Lew Archer” private detective novels …. err “Lew Harper” novels. In 1966, a film starring Paul Newman, called Harper, was made of a Macdonald novel, “The Moving Target” (1949) which had as its lead cynical private eye Lew Archer. Why the change from Archer to Harper? Rumour has it that Newman wanted a “H” film name after the character after his success in The Hustler (1961) and Hud (1963) (and he did Hombre in 1967). So “Archer” became “Harper”. Well, “Harcher” doesn’t work. Harper was  big hit … and after much toing and froing this is its sequel.

It wasn’t a hit. I’m not sure if that had anything to do with the lack of a “H” title.

Though watchable, in that everything from the 70s is watchable way, I’m not sure why the film wasn’t better. Director Stuart Rosenberg is good and much underrated director, one of the films early draft screenplays was written by the great (later director) Walter Hill, and the cast is good. Newman (an excellent Harper / Archer) and wife Joanne Woodward supported by (the the always reliable) Tony Franciosa, Murray Hamilton, Gail Strickland, (a young) Melanie Griffith, (the always good) Richard Jaeckel, and (the wonderful) Paul Koslo. In a support is Andrew Robinson who played the psychotic serial killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry (1971).

Perhaps the the problem with the film is they moved it from California to Louisiana, and from 1950 to 1975 (though that they had to do as the first film was set in 1966). Lew Archer is (largely) a product of southern California just before the counterculture revolution and looks out of place elsewhere (though the fish out of water theme is (a small) part of the narrative in the film).  It’s not bad but the book is better.

The novel is an excellent entertaining read. I read a lot of Ross Macdonald as my clear the head, stimulate but don’t over exercise the brain late night reads (I also read John D MacDonald (both Ross and John were crime writers writing at the same time – yes unfortunately, from time to time, I attribute one novel to the other in my head) and western writer Louis L’Amour late at night for the same reason). Some will throw “pulp” at these authors. I’m not sure if that is pejorative term anymore but even if it was these writers are a cut above. The stories don’t change greatly from book to book, and the characters only have occasional deep insight but they all usually have a wonderful sense of time and place, or at least they conjure up a time and place I can instantly visualise. And that is, to me, gold.

LINKS

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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964)

Posted on August 13, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Nathan Juran

SCREENWRITER: Nigel Kneale

FILM STARS: Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, Lionel Jeffries, Miles Malleson, Norman Bird, Peter Finch (uncredited cameo)

COUNTRY: England

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: H.G. Wells

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Fontana

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1964

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1901

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Sci Fi

WORDS: H.G. Wells adaptations are always a hoot, especially when they are set in their period trappings, which (admittedly) are rare.

His novels (and short stories) almost always make good films – The Invisible Man (the 1933 film with many spinoffs), War of the Worlds (1953, 2005 and many spinoffs), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1932 (called Island of Lost Souls) 1977 and 1996), The Time Machine (1960, 2002), and the schlocky entertaining The Food of the Gods (1965 (called Village of the Giants)) and 1976), Empire of the Ants (1977), as well as non-sci-fi – The History of Mr. Polly (1949), Kipps (1941), The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937), The Passionate Friends (1949).

And he proves adaptable – the musical Half a Sixpence (1967) was based on his novel “Kipps” and rock opera (Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds (1979)) and radio (Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio adaptation broadcast of The War of the Worlds) gave him a shot.

Wells, himself, is so well known he becomes a character in a spinoff of one his own adventures in Karl Alexander’s novel and Time after Time which was made into a (excellent) film in 1979, and where Wells uses his time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper into the 20th century.

Most of the films update his novels to contemporary times but like Jules Verne I like Wells best when he is done in period and The First Men in the Moon is (largely) set in Victorian times

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His thought was scientific (his earliest specialised training was in biology) rather than fantasy and he thought in a Darwinian context. He was also an outspoken socialist, progressive, and often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. He wrote social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography but it’s his pre-World War 1 science fiction novels which led him to be called the “father of science fiction”.

“The First men in the Moon” is an entertaining read, and read today fuels anyone’s imagination (especially if you are of the steam punk bent). The protagonists (an English scientist and his neighbour) go to the moon and discover an underground empire with an insectoid population.

I saw the film before I read the novel. It is perhaps, the second Wells film I saw (War of the Worlds 1953 the first) when I saw it as a kid on TV in the 70s. It appealed to me then (I tracked down the book and read it shortly after), and I have watched it since a few times including once with my kids and it still holds up as an entertaining romp with some science and morality thrown in.

The film follows the book closely though with some notable differences. The increased knowledge of the moon in the 60s years since the novel’s publication required changes for 1964 audiences. The protagonists (still British though they are accompanied to the moon with a female romantic interest (a turn of the century “feminist freethinker” but the kind of woman Wells would have approved of) wear suits whilst on the surface (there was air in the novel), and the plant life that erupts across the lunar surface at sunrise has been done away with. Otherwise, the film has had to accommodate the moon race of the 60s and this is done effectively as a prequel, with the Americans landing on the moon and finding a British flag (now that’s funny) and a note leading to someone on Earth, and a story told in flashback.

As a kid the film was mildly frightening (human size ants! …come on that would scare the crap out of you as a kid) but all encompassing and as an adult it is a well-paced adventure with great special effects from Ray Harryhausen and directed by Nathan Juran (a expert in sci fi – The Deadly Mantis (1957), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) and adventure The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), Jack the Giant Killer (1962)). It didn’t hurt that he had worked as an art director before becoming a director. Written by Englishman Nigel Kneale (and expert in sci fi having done the Quatermass films and TV shows in the UK).

The film looks good. It may be an English film but clearly American money and input (American special effects master, director, and female lead) and produced by Columbia pictures, who made a lot of films in the UK in the 60s, give it gloss.

The screenplay contains quite a few confronting questions about human nature and colonialism as well as some light satire (all Wellsian), a nod to science (the moon creatures have solar power) and a unusual (though not unexpected) abrupt ending. There is also a melancholia as the old man looks back at his youthful adventure with his now deceased love which is endearing.

The cast (essentially three of them) are great: American female lead, spunky Martha Hyer, Lionel Jefferies as the manic eccentric inventor, a long way from the boring seriousness of modern movie scientists, and Edward Judd as the not invincible hero.

Not everything has to be Interstellar (2014), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or Ad Astra (2019) … please, less of them. Of course, not everything has to be Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) or Star Wars (1977). There is a place where science and fiction, fact and fun, can intersect, but so rarely do, but it does here. Importantly, there are enough pauses in the action for the wonder of the adventure to sink in and make an impact on the imagination.

You have to watch this and unless you are an overly serious and pretentious type, or like your action with no pauses, you will enjoy this film.

NB: it was remade in 2010 as Made for TV movie in England. I have not seen that.

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Posted in Book Type, Novel, Science Fiction | Tagged | 2 Comments

RAIN MAN (1988)

Posted on August 6, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Barry Levinson

SCREENWRITER: Ronald Bass, Barry Morrow

FILM STARS: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino, Jerry Molen, Ralph Seymour, Michael D. Roberts, Bonnie Hunt, Beth Grant, Lucinda Jenney, Barry Levinson, Bob Heckel

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Leonore Fleischer

TYPE: Novelisation

PUBLISHER: Penguin

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1989

COUNTRY: Australia

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1989

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS: Rain Man was one of those films the Academy Awards loves. It has a linear told familiar script with drama and comedy, a moral heart that will leave you uplifted at the end, and by good acting, good direction, good photography.

It is smart enough to throw up seemingly hard questions which are resolved or at least addressed by the end. Everything in it clicks and works like a fine oiled machine.

It is also a film were the script never really answers any questions or explores any moral questions in any depth (as opposed to resolving plot situations), where the drama isn’t uncomfortable, the comedy isn’t alienating, the emotion isn’t deep, where the actors are acting, where the direction is slick and anonymous, and where the photography is sharp.

It is all clean lines with nothing to make you squirm in your seat which the Academy loves (and love it they did – it won Best Picture, Director, Actor (Hoffman) and Screenplay)

Just like many of the recent Oscar Best Picture winners it is also very middle brow.

And maybe the world was middlebrow – the film was a hit worldwide and the highest grossing film in 1988 in the US.  To appeal to that many people you have to have something for everyone. And, don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with big box office appeal, but, big box office plus Oscar wins, usually, but not all always, end up in the worst of middle brow entertainments.

The films are big and banal though with some minor message thrown in. They are films that can be watched, enjoyed (sometimes), and then forgotten.  All big box office and best Picture winners : Ordinary People (1980), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), Out of Africa (1985), The Last Emperor (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Forrest Gump (1994), The English Patient (1996), American Beauty (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Million Dollar Baby (2004), 12 Years A Slave (2013), Spotlight (2015), Moonlight (2016), Green Book (2018), CODA (2021).

Rain Man is (a better) one of those.

The film is a old buddy road film with the buddies being two brothers (Cruise and Hoffman – unlikely as there is 25 years difference in ages). The younger brother is confronted with an older brother he did not know about who is some sort of Savant syndrome, autistic type. His hostility and cynicism grow to love as they travel across America. The film is basically a riff on Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men” but the characters in Rain Man live in a vacuum with a pot of gold (the inheritance) at the end and don’t confront the hard issues of humans dealing with each other and accepting each other as they come.

I recall I enjoyed the film (when I saw it in the 90s) but haven’t seen it since, nor need to see it again (but maybe I will). Hoffman pulls out another good performance in a role which was always going to win accolades for whoever played it, and Tom is eager (and annoying), in that early Tom Cruise way. The film boosted his (already on a roll) career immeasurably. Levinson’s direction is slick as it always is (there are no rough edges on his films (he is like the Spielberg of drama), but like Fred Zinnemann he is a good craftsman and master puppeteer as long as you don’t mind seeing the strings. His best film is his first film, the wonderful Diner (1982).

Writers Barry Morrow (the not dissimilar Bill (1981), and Bill: On His Own (1983), Gospa (1995), Mercy of the Sea (2003)) and Ron Bass (Black Widow (1987), The Joy Luck Club (1993), When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), Swing Vote (1999), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) … and, his best Gardens of Stone (1987) which isn’t that different to the others though it does have Francis Ford Coppola as director)) write thoughtful dramatic entertainments.

The film also has one of those awful Hans Zimmer 1980s scores which seriously date it, or would, I suspect, date it if I watched it again now.

It’s the type of dramatic feel good film which lends itself to potential excess which we see in many of the woke uplifting films of recent years. If remade today it would, no doubt, win many awards all over again, and not be nearly as good.

On the plus side the film was such a success that it increased awareness of people with autism and savant syndrome.

No need to read the novelisation.

Writer Leonore Fleischer is one of the giants of novelisations. She has written 40 plus novelisations under her own name or under pseudonyms

She said in 1977, “I paint by numbers, I confess it. I pad out, supply background, impute motivation, invent gestures. I ride on the coat-tails of somebody else’s creation. But work is work and I’m as good as the best of the rest – just ask my agent. Ask the kids who read Benji. Ask Stephen Sondheim and Tony Perkins; I novelized The Last of Sheila. They loved my book; I never saw their film. I never see any of the films. I’m lucky if I get to see stills.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonore_Fleischer

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THE ENEMY BELOW (1957)

Posted on July 30, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Dick Powell

SCREENWRITER: Wendell Mayes

FILM STARS: Robert Mitchum, Curd Jürgens, Theodore Bikel, David Hedison, Russell Collins, Kurt Kreuger, Frank Albertson, Biff Elliot, Ralph Manza, Doug McClure, Darryl F. Zanuck

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: D.A. Rayner

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Fontana Books

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1958

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1956

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: War

WORDS: Author D.A. Rayner (Denys Arthur Rayner 1908-1967), was a Royal Navy officer who became a writer. Born in Muswell Hill (home of the Kinks – I randomly threw that in), in North London, he joined the naval reserve in 1925. By 1939, he qualified himself to command the 14th Anti-Submarine Group comprising a unit of armed trawlers. In 1940 he was appointed commander of a corvette, HMS Verbena, operating in the Atlantic. Just after Christmas 1942, he was given the lead of an escort group, in command of the destroyer HMS Shikari, becoming one of the first RNVR officers in the Royal Navy. In October 1943 Rayner was given command of destroyer HMS Warwick and he was on board that ship when it was torpedoed by a U-Boat. He was then given command of the destroyer HMS Highlander and then in 1944 corvette HMS Pevensey Castle. After 24 years with the navy Rayner retired from the RNVR in 1949. He saw action, was sunk by a u-boat, sunk u-boats he thinks (who knows … they are under water) and talked the talk.

The Enemy Below reads like something by someone very familiar with warships

The book is the story of a prolonged duel between a U-boat and a British destroyer in September 1943 … they cat and mouse each other all over the South Atlantic ocean. The book focuses on the tactics by each of the commanders, Britisher John Murrell, Captain of the HMS Hecate, and German U-boat Kapitän von Stolberg, a man from an aristocratic background who is not enamoured with the Nazi regime (naturally enough … Rayner was trying to elicit (some) sympathy for the opponent).

The battle ends with combatants together in lifeboats in a fistfight, after the destroyer has rammed the submarine.

The end is highly unlikely but the build up is plausible though still unlikely.

Rayner, himself in a preface, points out that the story is fictional and, as far as he is aware, no British destroyer ever fought a single-ship action against a U-boat. He goes on to suggest that in such an action, the odds are more in favour of the submarine, which has more chances of sinking her adversary by torpedo and deck gun, whilst presenting a smaller target for the destroyer. He is also of the view that an attempt by a ship to ram a submarine would cause major damage to the latter and little damage to the U-boat due to the thin metal used to plate the ship.

He did say it is fiction.

It’s a good read but perhaps it is a little technical which drags the narrative, though salty sailors may get more from it. There isn’t much background to the story apart from the tactics and the commanders deciding on what tactics to use. It doesn’t build suspense so much as read like a description of an actual event.

The film on the other hand milks the central premises for everything and comes out as one of the best war films of the 1950s.

Of course being an American film the hero is now American.

The American Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Haynes commanded by Murrell (played by the always good Robert Mitchum) detects and attacks a German U-boat (Unterseeboot) commanded by (the always good) Curt Jurgens.

The ending is also slightly different, they develop a respect (a war movie trope) for each other more so in the film than in the novel (where they are also both more war weary), perhaps as a result of Americans being less snarky about the Germans, than the English.

Apparently producer-director Dick Powell let the public decide the ending for the film. Details of the two endings were reported (in a July 1957 edition of ‘The Hollywood Reporter”) which stated that Powell filmed the two endings because he thought that the original ending (the unused one) may be too bleak (and if it is the one below it is more bleak than the novel), and then he let a preview audience vote for the ending they liked best. The ending he used won by “unanimous vote”. The ending which wasn’t used had both commanders die by drowning at the end of this picture when Murrell dives into the sea to rescue Von Stolberg as opposed to them both surviving.

Screenwriter Wendell Mayes said “Its original ending was better. You remember where the German captain is on the submarine surrounded by fire, and the character played by Mitchum brings him across on a rope? All the men were off the ship but these two men. Now these two men were burnt-out cases, both of them. They are not there for any reason except that they have to be there. The moment Mitchum gets hold of him [the German], and starts pulling him aboard, the ship blows up, and at that point, you pull back to watch this tremendous explosion, and you keep pulling back until there’s nothing left for the audience to see but the great, vast, empty sea with a little group of boats floating on it. The point was Dick and I both felt that these two characters were men who had no reason to live. There’s much more feeling if they should die, one finally trying to help the other after killing him. But the studio said, “No, you like both of them. You can’t kill them. It’ll disappoint the audience.” Nothing. So we had the ending with them standing smoking a cigarette on the back end of the destroyer, something like that. One of those things one must do”.
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft138nb0zm&chunk.id=d0e13271&toc.id=&brand=ucpress

The action is solid but Mitchum and Jurgens are the whole show. Mitchum plays the naval captain without a hint of the surliness, or rebellion his characters had in the past. He didn’t always play roles this straightforward but it works here because in the back of our heads we know this is Mitchum and he will do something unexpected and he does that in the cat and mouse and ramming of the u-boat. Something left of center is natural and wholly satisfying when it comes from Mitcham. Jurgens is solid also and took the role seriously – in an interview in July 1977 with ‘The New York Times”, he said: “This was an important picture for me because it was the first film after the war in which a German officer was not interpreted as a freak”. This is probably about right though James Mason’s Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953) isn’t a one sided stereotype and neither is John Wayne’s sea captain in The Sea Chase (1955), though admittedly he is not a German officer but a former German navy officer and German captain in their merchant marine.

The rest of the cast provide support as sounding boards, Bikel for Jurgens and Hedison (who seemed to spend a lot of his career on boats or submarines) for Mitchum. Of interest, to me, is Doug McClure appears unbilled. You have to love Doug.

Former actor and singer, Dick Powell, turned to directing in the 50s and produced some effective, more thoughtful than most, entertainments. Even his Genghis Khan epic with John Wayne, The Conqueror (1956), has some effective moments and the film isnt nearly as bad as is always suggested. If anyone other than John Wayne (or a Hollywood leading man of action films) had played Khan the film would be credited as a passable and Hollywood epic.

Screenwriter Wendell Mayes was starting off on his film screenwriting career and loved working from novels. He went on to do The Hunters (1958) (with Powell as director and Mitchum as star) as well as war films Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and In Harm’s Way (1965), thrillers Death Wish (1974), and character dramas Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Advise & Consent (1962), Hotel (1967). All have roots in his screenplay here.

LINKS

TRAILER

Posted in Novel, War | 2 Comments

THE DEVIL’S BRIGADE (1968)

Posted on July 23, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Andrew V. McLaglen

SCREENWRITER: William Roberts

FILM STARS: William Holden, Cliff Robertson, Vince Edwards, Andrew Prine, Jeremy Slate, Claude Akins, Jack Watson, Richard Jaeckel, Bill Fletcher, Richard Dawson, Tom Troupe, Luke Askew, Jean-Paul Vignon, Tom Stern, Harry Carey Jr., Michael Rennie, Carroll O’Connor, Dana Andrews, Gretchen Wyler, Patric Knowles, Wilhelm Von Homburg, Maggie Thrett, James Craig, Richard Simmons, Norman Alden.

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Robert H. Adleman and Col. George Walton

TYPE: Non Fiction

PUBLISHER: Bantam

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1968

COUNTRY: USA

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1966

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: War

WORDS: Hello Dirty Dozen.

Unfair but this comparison is often made between this film and The Dirty Dozen (1967).

E. M. Nathanson wrote the Novel The Dirty Dozen in 1965.

The Devil’s Brigade was based on a 1966 novel by (ex soldier) American novelist and historian Robert H. Adleman and (ex soldier) Col. George Walton, a member of the title brigade.

Both novels try to throw in authenticity though The Dirty Dozen’s mission is fictional and is clearly aimed more at escapism.

Both books were overshadowed by the film versions.

The Dirty Dozen directed by Robert Aldrich has become a classic whilst The Devil’s Brigade is largely forgotten by the mainstream though loved by war movie biffs.

It is often thought that The Devil’s Brigade (film) rips off The Dirty Dozen, and that may be the case though if it does it is the result of late re-writes. Brigade producer David L. Wolper bought the rights to The Devil’s Brigade in 1965, well before filming began on The Dirty Dozen. The Dirty Dozen was released in United States on June 15, 1967 having been filmed in England filmed Apr 25, 1966 – Oct 13, 1966 whilst The Devil’s Brigade was filmed in Utah and Santa Elia Fiume Rapido, Italy Apr 10, 1967 – Jul 3, 1967. The Dirty Dozen was an instant success so if the story of its rag tag misfits on mission was copied (or highlighted) for Devil’s Brigade it would have involved some frantic rewrites as Dirty Dozen was release only a month before shooting finished on Devil’s Brigade. Nothing is impossible in Hollywood though admittedly both original books deal with rag tag but violent soldiers trained for special forces or commando operations.

Either way Dirty came out first, is a better film, and has the cavalcade of future stars. It got the public’s attention.

Producer Wolper later wrote “The Devil’s Brigade turned out to be a terrific film. It was a wonderful story, the acting was excellent, and the preview audiences and critics loved it. Unfortunately it came out just a few months after the release of The Dirty Dozen, which was the same kind of story. It was a big hit and it killed us. We got lost in the wind.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Brigade_(film)

Coming out so soon after Dozen, Devil’s Brigade loses out though it’s not a bad film and the comparison isn’t wholly fair. The Devil’s Brigade has similarities to Dirty Dozen but it more serious and historically accurate, at least in its second half, making it a cross between Dirty Dozen and another mid 60s spectacular, The Battle of the Bulge (1965).

BIG war films were all the rage in the mid to late 60s

Here (the always wonderful) William Holden is put in charge of a unit called the 1st Special Service Force, composed of elite Canadian commandos (led by Cliff Robertson) and undisciplined American soldiers (led by Vince Edwards). The usual tensions in training are resolved as the men learn to become a fighting unit and do battle with the Germans in Italy (specifically an attack on the impregnable German mountain stronghold, Monte la Difensa).

The 1st Special Service Force (“The Devil’s Brigade”) existed and was highly decorated. The force was an elite American–Canadian commando unit in World War II, under the command of the United States Fifth Army. The unit was organized in 1942 and trained at Fort William Henry Harrison near Helena, Montana, in the United States (near the Canadian border). The Force served in the Aleutian Islands, and fought in Italy, and southern France before being disbanded in December 1944. However, to the veterans of the Force, the film was historically inaccurate suggesting there was never an aspect of The Dirty Dozen.

The non-fiction book reads a little like fiction, fictional non-fiction or non-fictional fiction? Real characters are given dramas drawn against real events. I’m not sure if it is engrossing though but there is detail.

The film, heightening the books themes, is a war film with all the usual men on a mission war movie tropes: a group of no-good Army hardcases and criminals “volunteer” for a suicidal assignment as an alternative to stiff sentences; a tough commanding officer oversees a semi-comic training period during where the men settle their difference and learn to work together as a unit; as preparation the group completes a smaller mission of skill to show their ability; the final is the blood-soaked mission which costs lots of lives (with many of the second leads dying heroically) before victory; the enemy, the Germans, are faceless and disposed off quickly.

It is what it is, and it’s fun, moving between the action adventure and “war is hell” themes.

Andrew V McLaglen, son of John Ford regular Victor McLaglen, had worked himself up from assistant director (on John Wayne produced films in the 50s) to a good action director. He is actually much underrated. Some of his gentler films are dabbed with John Ford themes (including the occasionally clumsy but still wonderful Shenandoah (1965)) but the big action films, including this one, show he can handle big casts and big action sequences (it’s harder than it looks) – The Wild Geese (1978), North Sea Hijack (1979), Breakthrough (1979), The Sea Wolves (1980) … and he did the same in many westerns The Way West (1967), Bandolero (1968), John Wayne’s The Undefeated (1969) and Chisum (1970), The Last Hard Men (1976) and many others. Interestingly he directed The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985) a televison sequesl to the 1967 film.

The screenplay was written by William Roberts who co-wrote men on a mission westerns The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Red Sun (1971) as well as take the objective war film The Bridge at Remagen (1969). All classics in their own ways.

Holden is perfect – he seems to be aged beyond his years (he seems much older than 49 though the age is about right) and his usual casual cynicism movie persona he had been using since the early 1950s is in keeping with 1968 moods. Second leads, Cliff Robertson and Vince Edwards (always underrated and coming out of the successful TV series Ben Casey (1961-1966) are both sturdy and with Andrew Prine, Jeremy Slate (always snarky, always good), Claude Akins, Richard Jaeckel (who was also in Dirty Dozen, and should have been a star), Luke Askew, and Harry Carey Jr. in supports how can you go wrong? And, just like Dirty Dozen where there are officer big wigs who drop in and out of the plot providing cameos for well known actors (Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Webber, and a less famous at the time George Kennedy), here Michael Rennie, Dana Andrews, Patric Knowles, and James Craig do similar cameos of authority.

Trivia:

The cast of The Devil’s Brigade included NFL running back Paul Hornung and World Middleweight Champion boxer Gene Fullmer in minor roles. They can be seen in the barroom brawl sequence, Hornung as a belligerent lumberjack and Fullmer as the bartender. Legendary NFL American football fullback, Jim Brown was in Dirty Dozen (in a largish role) – must have been a thing to drop sports stars into films (even if Jim did go o to have a reasonable film career).

Interestingly producer Wolper had the Brigade wear striking but fictional red berets that appeared as well as on the film’s posters and on the tie-in paperback cover of Adelman and Walton’s book.

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009) features a character named Lt. Aldo Raine aka “Aldo the Apache” (in tribute to Aldo Ray) played by Brad Pitt who wears the Devil’s Brigade unit’s crossed arrows collar insignia and red arrowhead shoulder patch.

Watch the film … and perhaps, read the book if you want more back story.

LINKS

on set

TRAILER

The trailer seems to suggest that the action and adventure of peacetime are no comparison to war …

Posted in Non Fiction, War | Tagged | 2 Comments

THE BIG SHORT (2015)

Posted on July 16, 2023 by velebit2

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Adam McKay

SCREENWRITER: Charles Randolph, Adam McKay

FILM STARS: Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Rafe Spall, Melissa Leo.

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Michael Lewis

TYPE: Non Fiction

PUBLISHER: Penguin

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2015

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2010

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The Big Short : Inside the Doomsday Machine

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS:

I haven’t read the book.

I have seen the film.

I should read the book.

The film was excellent. A great example about how to make interesting the potentially boring behind the scenes nuts and bolts that lead up to a non-violent historical event. The historical event here being financial crisis of 2007–08 which rocked the USA and reverberated around the world.

The Big Short describes several of the main players (names changed), who believed (against the grain and against prevailing wisdom) the housing (loans and mortgages) bubble in the USA was going to burst and became involved in the creation of a credit default swap market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–08.

A crisis it was. Described in Wikipedia as a:

“severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions,[2] and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a “perfect storm”.

Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to American real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. Financial institutions worldwide suffered severe damage, reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and a subsequent international banking crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis

The book is accurately subtitled “Inside the Doomsday Machine”

I’m no financial genius and still use the old school jars method of running my finances – a jar for bills, a jar for loan repayments, a jar for living expenses, a jar for holidays etc (don’t come looking for jars … they are metaphorical for bank accounts) and I don’t move money around much or bet on outcomes but I could follow what was going on even with all the financial detail and jargon that need to be understood to know where the film is going. Purposefully, the film dumbed down the high (and low) finance for people like me with on-screen visuals and on-screen celebrity non-sequitur explanations to accompany the narrative which was great, and compelling, giving it a docudrama feel at times.

I expect that was part of its success, telling a true story, reasonably accurately (one of my big finance mates with 40 years under his belt who lived through the crisis, ta Greg, says the film was spot on). Who am I to argue?

Its skill, and there were three separate but concurrent stories, loosely connected by their actions that were followed in the years leading up to the 2007 housing market crash, is in keeping all the stories on track and having them build up and feed off each other to the cataclysmic event. And it’s quirky funny as you would expect from the director writer of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008), The Other Guys (2010), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013). With four big stars, Pitt, Bale, Carell and Gosling it was guaranteed good box office (and the book had been a best seller also – 28 weeks on The New York Times’ non-fiction bestseller list in 2010).

Modern films with their talky-ness (and appreciation that modern audiences are, perhaps more in tune) have captured the business and finance world more accurately that golden age cinema ever could and, perhaps, that’s why they didn’t deal with the micronomics but the people and the big picture … I also miss the emotion and moving pictures to tell a story (the “cinema”) of the old films (American Madness (1932), The Conquerors (1932), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Executive Suite (1954), From the Terrace (1960) etc)

My only minor criticism with this film is that the central punter characters who gained wealth from the crisis are portrayed as white knight eccentrics who can see the system about to topple. This is the system they work in and had profited by and now stood to profit more (which they did) because they were particularly astute.  They aren’t saints, they just saw an opportunity. The film needs us to identify with them, hence their occasional put downs of big business. Maybe they were like that (maybe it’s in the book), but ultimately I thought it a little unnecessary. They saw an opportunity and took it … vulture like maybe but the real vultures were the big banks and finance houses, the corporate heads and the system itself which clearly lacked regulation.

The books author, Michael Lewis, is a well published financial journalist (with a degree in art history as well as economics). He seems to have the knack to dumb down complex financial money shenanigans and their human motivations into a fiction-like narrative. He did the same with in his book on American baseball finances, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), which was also made into a film, Moneyball (2011). Another worthwhile film to watch even if you have no interest in baseball, just like this film about banking and finance.

LINKS

TRAILER

Posted in Book Type, Drama, Non Fiction | Tagged | Leave a comment